Flu May Be Spread By Just Breathing

"People with flu generate infectious aerosols [tiny droplets that stay suspended in the air for a long time] even when they are not coughing, and especially during the first days of illness," he explained in a university news release. "So when someone is coming down with influenza, they should go home and not remain in the workplace and infect others."

Actually, this is old news....the process is known as "shedding." An infected person is most infectious during the earliest stages of infection, when the virus is replicating furiously. Pre-symptomatic cases shed copious quantities of live virus in bodily fluids (called "inapparent infection.")

By the time a case recognizes they are coming down with influenza (are becoming symptomatic), they have likely transmitted large quantities of virus & left secretions on doorknobs etc. Viral shedding goes down rapidly once a case becomes symptomatic.

You can get it going to the grocery store! I work at a school...a germ factory! They are doing extra sanitizing of all the desks and tables so no vacuuming this week just sanitizing.

I have not heard that many kids are out with the flu we have had some gastroenteritis (stomach bug) but not a lot of coughing. Last year this time we had a lot of kids coughing. I know because I make them sit at the back of the class when they are coughing. I got pneumonia one year because a kid coughed on me and I got sick within 24 hours! In a week I had pneumonia!

I've read this study and several articles about this study and though they found viral RNA in exhalation of flu victims, the study didn't try to grow the virus in culture (why I can't fathom) and so it is unknown whether you could get influenza from this method! Best advice! Wash your hands and sanitize!

but its odd ,some get it some dont ,this time last year three of us came down with a very bad flu,

bedridden for a week,

i was one ,

of the other co -workers, one had a slight cold and no one else got anything........

It's not the distance of a sneeze, but the formation of "droplet nuclei." These are microscopic bits of nasal & oral secretions that dry almost instantly, becoming floating "chips" containing viruses that remain airborne for (in some cases) hours. They then can be inhaled deep into the respiratory tract, causing infection.

This is from the "good old days" of discussions about Ebola. This also applies to influenza transmission.

It has definitely made me more aware of what I'm doing, what I'm touching, where I'm going and what times I am going places. I went to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription the other day and I used the hand sanitizer as soon as I walked in the door, I didn't sit down or touch anything except having to sign for the meds, then I used the hand sanitizer again, lol. I got up early Saturday and went to the store right when it opened at 8:00 hoping there wasn't a lot of people shopping and I was the only one in the store. We passed on an invitation with friends to go to the casino Saturday night, eeewwww, I can only imagine the sickness, lol. A little paranoid, so just being a little more careful when possible.

The flu can be spread just by breathing, new study finds

The researchers found that a
significant number of flu patients regularly exhaled the virus via
aerosol particles that were small enough to cause a risk of airborne
transmission. About 48 percent of the 23 fine aerosol samples the
researchers collected when people breathed but didn’t cough had
detectable levels of the flu, and most of those were infectious (i.e.,
they could make other people sick).

While most people tend to think that they can catch
the flu only by being exposed to droplets from an infected person’s
cough or sneeze, or by touching surfaces that have been contaminated
with those droplets, the researchers found that that just isn’t the
case.

Before you panic, know this: While the information is
surprising to most people, it’s not to the medical community. “We knew
that the flu had the capacity to do this, but this study is just showing
it’s a real phenomenon,” Amesh A. Adalja, MD, a board-certified
infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the
Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

The flu
is spread most efficiently from person to person when people are within 3
to 6 feet of each other, William Schaffner, MD, an infectious disease
specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of
Medicine, tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “When someone with the flu breathes
out, it hovers in the air, and if someone who is within range breathes
it in, they are infected,” he explains.

“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” Gary Kasparov

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